May 2009

Monthly Archives

This is going to seem just like the previous article on hosting your site. But here is another error people make when running their online businesses….. Shopping Cart software. They spend a ton of time trying to make their site work with free software and expect to have money flowing in. Not gonna happen and here’s why……

The time people spend on developing software just gets it out the door. The effort that people spend on getting software to be applicable to a business takes a lot of time and money in order to make the software work. It takes communication with the a vast amount of ebusinesses that are diverse in their products, services and operations. It takes a team to create the software that is committed to constant revisions in the programming and a team that lacks an ego (very hard to find). And finally it takes a commitment to success that will post a challenge to the bottom line that you have worked for in the aforementioned points. That just so happens to be our mission statement and the thesis of this article.

There is a cost to all these operating expenses and to keep the software up to date…… and get this BUG FREE, you need to have revenue coming in the door, just like your client’s stores. This of it all this way; if you are not in the business model of making money, how do you expect to make a business software that makes your clients money?

Let’s take a look of some of the software that is out there.

osCommerce – Yes osCommerce is everywhere. It is the basis of ZenCart, CubeCart, C.R.E. Loaded, XCart, Magento, OSMax, and the list goes on. Some of this software you pay for, which is great! Others are for free and are nothings but problems for what they promise and how they falls short of their expectations. osCommerce is on hosting packages as a free install and there are a plenty of people out there pushing it on their clients as if it is easy to modify without an idea of programming. Without proper knowledge of programming the store isn’t going to give you the edge over your competition and the aesthetics of the site will make your delivery in the way of images and site layout look horrendous.

osCMax – If you want to host it somewhere else, good luck. It is free software, just as long as you host it with their company. So you are stuck. As a business owner you want options, and that just eliminates a major ability to more, if you are unhappy with your store and want to go somewhere else.

Magento – Extremely heavy and ridden with bugs. We do repairs on their store, upgrades, and additions with contributions. And it is a huge headache to get any of it done. The one thing that stands out is that it takes forever to test the store due to the load time, due to the heavy and cumbersome software. What does this all equal? More down time, because your store isn’t functioning for a longer period of time, which means that you are not making money. More money now has to be spent to fix that problems and get them corrected, and you will spend more money on the corrections, rather than have a working right from the start. This is software that boast a ton of features, but what good are they if the software does not work.

Now that you have an idea of what to look for in online shopping cart software, take a look around, see who answers the phone at the programming companies for the software, what options you have, and the reviews on the software.